Jonathan McCarty, who came to
the Brookville area with his daddy Ben McCarty sometime in 1803, is one of the most interesting people in the history of SE Indiana, even if you don't think it matters.
He appears to have
become either the best politician of his time or one of the great manipulators.
A Fayette County history
condenses McCarty’s youth as having been born in Virginia in 1795 and following
the crowd to Indiana territory. The first Fairfield settlers are said to have
staked out their land in 1804, but most histories say Ben McCarty was digging
wells around New Trenton a year earlier than that.
We can fudge on the years. The
internet won’t argue with any of that.
What became of McCarty is the
stuff that could be legendary if it weren’t so politically muddled. It’s hard
to tell if he was a Whig, a Jeffersonian Republican-Democrat, a Jacksonian, an
anti-Jacksonian or, oddly a Possum Democrat. Any or all apply.
He was a “young Turk” in 1816
when he ambled off to Corydon to represent that part of Indiana in the creation
of a new state, Corydon being the state capital at the moment.
The Fayette history:
“(He was) reared on his
father's farm in Franklin County, within sight of the village of Brookville and
on the banks of Whitewater river, and in the little log school-house of that
place he received his education. For a time he assisted his brother in the
duties of the clerk's office, at intervals reading law, without the assistance
of a living teacher, and at length he was licensed to practice at the bar.”
Ah, the Lincoln imagery hovers
like a warm halo. Anyhow, McCarty “was soon elected to the state legislature
from Franklin County, and as a member of that body he procured the passage of a
law creating the county of Fayette.”
This is where McCarty plays
into the fate of Fairfield, even if the story carries no water.
The establishment of Fayette
County in 1819 moved Fairfield to the northern boundary of Franklin County.
Stories at the time said the unfortunate change in geography allowed Brookville
to swoop in and claim the title as county seat.
Part of that is attached to
the creation of the Eads Addition to Fairfield around 1818. William Eads and
McCarty were associates and both appear to have been speculators with the
ability to alter the rules.
Eads Addition became the part
of Fairfield that held the public school from 1953 forward.
Virtually no real evidence
suggests Brookville or McCarty had such a nefarious plan in place. McCarty saw
the creation of Fayette County as a chance to become a powerful political
leader and, as population and motives of the time saw no reason for McCarty’s
plan to fail, it was simple planning. Adding counties to the young state was
natural. Lawyers and learned people saw such political dynamos as places to
exert their authority. New political strongholds meant wealth – a lot of it,
for people who managed the corral.
The educated people of the
time came to the new territory to become important, not to fish the pristine
streams and milk swaybacked cows.
In any case, McCarty took over
as chief cook-bottlewasher-rules maker for Connersville and other sloppy little
villages around it.
He wasn’t in Connersville long
and eventually expanded his reach to Fort Wayne, which was largely more
important than any other town in the state at the time. That’s where Hoosiers
did most of the work to shill the native tribes out of their land and create
Farmland USA. McCarty ran the land office in Allen County.
He had tried to run for state
office in the late 1820s, either as a Whig or somebody with a toupee, but he
lost to Brookville Judge John Test, who was a Republican, which was the same as
a Jeffersonian, more or less. Finally in 1831, history reveals McCarty being
elected to Congress, beating Test and Oliver Smith in a heated election.
Test had already been in
Congress and had been defeated by Smith, of Connersville.
McCartys were closely aligned
to the Templetons, one of the first families in Franklin County in 1804.
McCarty served in Congress
until 1837 and eventually found his way to Iowa, which was ripe for a political
opportunist. As a “Possum Democrat,” he was elected to Congress. Iowa’s first
elections were in 1846. Mac was there to take part.
He died at age 56. No idea on
the cause. By 1852, when he died, the nation had begun adding the Prairie
states to the union. Doubtless, McCarty envisioned himself as the caliber of
person who needed to manage that.
Indianapolis newspaper
reports, recounting McCarty’s role in government, claimed his greatest asset
was his public speaking ability. Most political achievers can claim that.
“Among the Whigs in Indiana in
1940, two were especially prominent. One was Jonathan McCarty of the so-called
White Water region, and he had few, if any superiors on the stump.” John Little
White of Madison was the other, the Indy Star revealed in 1907.
The Fayette biography, not
deemed objective in any way, says this of McCarty: “He was a man of limited
scholastic training, but possessed great natural powers. He was one of the most
talented men of Indiana, a forceful and eloquent speaker.”
Notes: Alternate spelling is
Johnathan, as referenced on his Find-A-Grave page. Benjamin McCarty, his
father, is interred in Sims-Brier Cemetery in New Fairfield.
- Lewis Publishing
Company. Biographical and genealogical history of Wayne, Fayette, Union and
Franklin counties, Indiana (Volume 1).
